Music Reviews : Pacific Trio Celebrates at Church

Twenty years ago to the hour was how the program note put it--that was when violinist Endre Balogh and cellist John Walz first performed chamber music together. Ten years later, pianist Edith Orloff joined them to form the Pacific Trio, which got together Tuesday night for an anniversary celebration in Pasadena’s Neighborhood Church.

Bohuslav Martinu’s seldom ventured Trio No. 2 in D minor served as centerpiece to the program. Like so many of this prolific composer’s works, this one proved uneven and, ultimately, disappointing.

Cast in three, medium-length movements, the Trio has a way of getting all worked up over nothing. So fluid and seemingly thoughtless is much of the writing--built upon two-, three- and four-note motives, sequenced over and over--that moments of genuine inspiration stick out: the solemn, baroque-style opening bars, or the chattering folk melody that suddenly breaks out in the finale.

But mostly the music remains, despite the Brahmsian textures and rich harmonies, altogether too facile. In this Trio as elsewhere, Martinu seems the 20th Century’s answer to Telemann and Saint-Saens. One certainly couldn’t fault the players, however, who turned in a crisp and forceful reading.

After some remembrances from Mehli Mehta at intermission (the conductor was mentor to Balogh and Walz), the printed program concluded with a fervent run-through of Smetana’s G-minor Trio. So fervent in fact, that a few details--such as the careful accenting of the violin melody in the first alternativo--went by the wayside, and rhythmic drive occasionally slumped into heaviness. Still, it was heartfelt, grandly sweeping music-making.

The concert opened with Beethoven’s “Kakadu” Variations, in a wonderfully pliant and communicative performance.

Encores: The Sixth Hungarian Dance by Brahms, the Second Piano Prelude by Gershwin (in an effective trio arrangement), the slow movement from Dvorak’s Opus 65 Trio . . . they may still be at it.